Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

Few sales organizations realize their full potential, partly because they don’t execute well. We urge organizations to move beyond conventional wisdom in how they think about executing sales processes and have placed methods for making improvement to sales execution at the center of our research on sales in 2014. In our recent research on sales forecasting almost half (44%) of sales organizations said they have impediments that are motivating management to consider further investment in sales technology, and the most common of those is inconsistent execution (for 53%). Many sales organizations don’t use training in a consistent manner and fail to automate processes to gain efficiency. Software provider Qvidian specializes in sales execution and has applications operating in a cloud environment and on mobile technology that help optimize sales processes and increase productivity of sales teams. The company has 15 years of experience in developing sales playbooks and proposal software, and more than 1,200 customers now use its applications in the cloud. Qvidian makes it a point to be adaptive in meeting the variety of needs of sales organizations across industries and sizes. Its Sales Playbooks provide digital guidance to help users achieve the best results in an efficient manner. One of the products’ focuses is to make sales processes repeatable, which is critical to optimizing revenue across quotas and territories. The playbook approach also supports what we call collaborative coaching, which our recent research shows is a top focus for improving collaboration in the sales forecasting process. Qvidian’s approach can automate and guide the sales process. The company also has introduced mobile support for its Sales Playbooks. Our research finds a need for that, as more than half (51%) of organizations already use tablets and another quarter (26%) plan to deploy them in the next 18 months. Qvidian supports its playbooks on the Apple iPad, which currently is the most widely used tablet in sales organizations. To further streamline the use of playbooks, Qvidian has user and functional integration with salesforce.com’s sales force automation software. The tight linkage enables triggering of actions based on rules for certain conditions. Qvidian’s independent approach to sales processes and systems fills a void in the SFA and CRM markets; its playbooks can run on any application commonly used in sales. To know where improvement is needed and how achieve it, companies need insights derived from analytics applied to data from sales processes. Qvidian Sales Analytics enables users to create and track metrics and indicators that can point out inefficiencies to be addressed through coaching and guidance and to establish repeatability. Analytics is consistently rated by sales professionals in our research as the top new technology to help improve sales efforts. Qvidian’s sales analytics help managers identify where sales reps are not following the mandated process and suggest ways to help through using a playbook or a series of steps that are known to provide better results. Qvidian offers other applications to help sales people be more efficient in the tedious tasks of preparing necessary documents and information. Qvidian Proposal Automation can help a sales organization deliver consistent proposals. Proposal Automation also helps standardize requests for proposal and suggests responses that have been proven accurate and effective. It also helps add consistency to sales presentations by quickly generating useful slides. Professionals typically spend large amounts of time on tasks such as these that automation can make repeatable and consistent across a sales organization. Qvidian’s customers range from large well-known brand names such as Aon, Office Depot and Prudential to smaller sales teams in technology companies such as inContact and Splunk. Making its sales applications available through cloud computing enables sales groups to deploy and use its software with little IT intervention and helps sales teams be self-sufficient in their sales processes. While many sales organizations still believe that sales force automation will address all their needs, we find that applications like those from Qvidian can help them operate more effectively and improve overall execution of sales processes. We recommend evaluating Qvidian if your organization is seeking to maximize sales productivity and gain consistent execution on the road to optimal results. Regards, Mark Smith CEO & Chief Research Officer

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